Today's post is the final installment of what me and my highlighter found meaningful in the chapter titled "Our Building Project" in Life After Church: God's Call to Disillusioned Christians by Brian Sanders.Mission. Finally, church is church only if it engages in the mission of God. Just as we were called and created to worship and for community, we were created for mission.
God gives gifts to his church to equip it to accomplish the mission of making disciples. This is our reason for existing. God's heart is for the expansion of his kingdom and the increase of his glory.
Delivering good news to our lost friends by proclamation and demonstration is the core purpose of every worshiper and every community of God. By adding this purpose to our worship and our gatherings, we become church.
Worship, gathering and mission--all three functioning together in any form represent the church of Jesus on earth.
A group of men who meet in a bar after work to talk about living deeper, more surrendered lives in which they take time to pray for their families and invite their non-believing friends to share a meal and the gospel would be church.
A Sunday morning service where the music and preaching move thousands of unrelated people, who return the next week to have the same experience, never engaging the mission or each other--this is not church.
A group of mothers invite other mothers to the park after school and builds relationships with them and their kids, hoping to share Jesus with them. They also meet to pray for each other, listen to struggles, cry together and recommit to the goal of living for Jesus. That is church.
The church softball team plays in a church league, worships together on Sunday and even enjoys good fellowship before and after the games with Christians from their own team and from other churches. This is not church.
Generally, if you break down why people have left or should leave churches, it can come down to one of these three areas: (1) God is not honored, (2) people aren't in community with each other, or (3) they aren't reaching anyone.
